Wishlist Wednesday – 03 February 2016

03Feb

Wishlist Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Pen to Paper where we post about one book that has been hanging out on our wish list (either for a long time, or not so long)

Sometimes I randomly come across books that look interesting but aren’t available yet and then promptly forget about what intrigued me about said book to begin with… This weeks Wishlist Wednesday book is no exception. According to GR, I added this book in early January, so its likely that I came across it mentioned in a thread reads to look forward to.

Description:
When brothers Tushar and Nakul Khurana, two Delhi schoolboys, pick up their family’s television set at a repair shop with their friend Mansoor Ahmed one day in 1996, disaster strikes without warning. A bomb—one of the many “small” bombs that go off seemingly unheralded across the world—detonates in the Delhi marketplace, instantly claiming the lives of the Khurana boys, to the devastation of their parents. Mansoor survives, bearing the physical and psychological effects of the bomb. After a brief stint at university in America, Mansoor returns to Delhi, where his life becomes entangled with the mysterious and charismatic Ayub, a fearless young activist whose own allegiances and beliefs are more malleable than Mansoor could imagine. Woven among the story of the Khuranas and the Ahmeds is the gripping tale of Shockie, a Kashmiri bomb maker who has forsaken his own life for the independence of his homeland.

Why am I excited to read it?
Talking about events such as terrorist events, especially in fiction, is a topic that IMHO takes a brave writer to tackle. Many of us remember where we were on 9/11, but there have been numerous other attacks around the world since then, many in countries that most of us possibly couldn’t locate on a map. This book intrigued me for that reason – an insight into the effects and after-effects of a series of small bombs (and while I haven’t read it, potential terrorist attacks). I’m intrigued to see how the author manages to weave the story of a bomb maker into that of his victims. An additional enticement to read The Association of Small Bombs is my desire to diversify my reading in 2016 by reading authors from different geographical regions of the world.